Prague, July 12 (CTK) – Cardinal Dominik Duka, primate of the Czech Catholic Church, has filed a lawsuit over the controversial theatre performances of Our Violence and Your Violence, in which Jesus rapes a Muslim woman, and The Curse, staining Pope John Paul II, Lidove noviny (LN) wrote on Thursday.
Both performances, written and directed by Bosnian-Croat Oliver Frljic, were staged during the Theatre World 2018 international festival held in Brno in May.
Apart from the shocking scene with Jesus, which stirred up protests directly during the performance, an actress pulls out a Czech flag from her vagina on the stage in Our Violence and Your Violence, while The Curse starts with a statue of the late Pope of Polish origin John Paul II with an erect penis and at its end, an actress is cutting a cross with a power saw.
Archbishop Duka says both plays have sharply infringed his rights guaranteed by the Charter of the Fundamental Rights and Freedoms.
In his lawsuit, Duka mentions an attack on inalienability of rights, freedom of religious conviction and the right to dignity and honour. As the head of Czech Catholics, he is of the view that the defamatory depiction of Jesus Christ harms him personally, and this is why he has turned to a court, LN writes.
“I have decided to file a lawsuit as a physical person. I am also a statutory body of the Czech Bishops’ Conference and represent the Catholic Church in the Czech Republic, but I am primarily a man who loves Jesus. The theatre’s steps strongly infringed my conviction, and this is why I am turning to the court to decide what is still art and what is wilful harming another person and my rights,” Duka told LN.
Duka sues the Centre of Experimental Theatre, administering the Husa na provazku theatre that staged the criticised performances. The Brno Municipal Court accepted his lawsuit.
Several legal complaints have been filed over the performance of Our Violence and Your Violence, which highlights the relation of the West to the Middle East in a provocative way, on suspicion of the defamation of a nation, race, ethnic or other groups of people, breach of the peace, pornography, slander, threatening the education of children and support for movements suppressing human rights and freedoms.
Some 30 rightist radicals from the Decent People movement stormed the Husa na provazku theatre in protest against the Our Violence and Your Violence production on May 26. They disturbed the performance for about an hour before a police anti-conflict team made them leave.
Senator Eliska Wagnerova (for Greens), a former Constitutional Court judge, filed a legal complaint against the radicals’ conduct on suspicion of rioting.
